| Quotation Marks
Double Quotation Marks
Any material that is directly quoted from speech, a source text, or other
form of publication must appear in double quotation marks (" ").
This includes parts of a sentence, short phrases, and sometimes even key
words that appear in the original. Failure to indicate a direct quotation,
even if the source is acknowledged, constitutes an act of plagiarism.
Land Force Command's doctrinal publication,
Canada's Army, states, "Senior NCOs are the link connecting soldiers
to their officers and officers to their soldiers" (146).
Colonel William Otter, in his Guide: A Manual
for the Canadian Militia, remarks that the Sergeant Major must be an
advisor to the unit Adjutant and, in general, act as "the eyes,
ears, and conscience" of the battalion (24).
Apart from signalling direct quotation, double quotation marks are also
generally used around the titles of articles in periodicals, essays, chapters
in books, episodes of radio and TV programmes, short stories, and short
poems.
Air Commodore (ret'd) Birchall's article "Leadership"
is a must-read for all CF members.
Lines from Col John McRae's poem "In Flanders Fields" appear
on the back of the new Canadian ten-dollar bill.
Single Quotation Marks
Single quotation marks (‘ ') should be reserved
for quoted material that appears within the words you are quoting. Do not
use single quotation marks around a simple direct quotation.
Douglas Bland states that "Brooke Claxton was
looking for a new type of officer, not merely a war hero. . . He needed
an officer who could easily and confidently function in both national
and international political-military circumstances and who would act not
as an advocate for the military's point of view but as a link between
military and government. . . who ‘[was] more a diplomat than a soldier.'"
[In quoting Bland, single quotation marks are
placed around Bland's quotation from Claxton.] |
Quotation Marks with Other Punctuation
Likely, appearance on the page has determined the following rules
for punctuation combined with quotation marks:
- Whatever the quoted material, however long or
short, commas and periods always appear inside the
closing quotation mark, unless some form of parenthetical documentation
follows the quotation.
- Colons (:) and semicolons (;) must always be
placed outside the closing quotation mark.
The first two tenets of early NATO strategy,
"the freedoms from want and from fear,"
differ from the last two ("the freedoms of worship and assembly")
in that they represent individual freedoms exempt from politics.
The Security Council has the right to oversee
the "consolidation of peace": the social,
political, and economic reconstruction of a country.
The ten years following the collapse of the Soviet
Union were defined only by the vague and increasingly antiquated phrase
"post-Cold War era."
In his article, "Democratic Civil-Military
Relations: A Canadian View," General Thériault identified
the two main challenges in Canadian civil-military relations as "the
quality of political control on the one hand, and the responsiveness,
adaptability, and cost-effectiveness of armed forces on the other"
(4).
[When using a parenthetical in-text citation method, the end punctuation
appears after the closing parenthesis.]
Placement of a question mark (?) or exclamation point (!) inside or outside
of quotation marks is determined by the nature of the sentence. See examples
under The Question Mark and The Exclamation
Point.
| Help!
Whether it appears inside or outside a closing
quotation mark, only one piece of punctuation is used at the end
of a sentence. If a quotation is placed at the end of your sentence
and includes its own punctuation, do not add any further punctuation
marks.
- The parade marshal yelled loudly, "Pick up your feet!"
- My essay title is "Who are the Real Terrorists?"
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Other
Uses for Quotation Marks |
